An Ex-Mas Feast (Short Story) by Uwem Akpan (The New Yorker, June 13 & 20, 2005)

We don’t usually discuss short stories here, but I couldn’t not mention this one. It's in the current issue of The New Yorker. You know how every once in a while you long to read something really different? You want somebody to tell you about something you don’t already know. You want to hear a new voice in fiction. Well, here it is. I won’t say any more about this story except that it’s about a street family living in a shack in Nairobi. Their speech is rendered in a fractured English but you catch on to it after a while. Despite what you might expect in the way of the grim horror of their existence, there’s plenty of humour and affection going on. A photo in the magazine shows the author to be a great hulking black man. The story sounds as if he’s writing about his own childhood. According to the editors’ notes on the contributors, however, he’s a Jesuit priest from Nigeria.

Brothers (Movie) by Susanne Bier, in Danish with English sub-titles

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in ages and it has one of the worst scenes I’ve ever seen in a movie. Correction: I didn’t actually see the scene in question. When it became obvious what was going to happen, I closed my eyes. The sounds were bad enough. It’s one of those moments that makes you want to turn in your membership card in the human race. All of which is to say that, although this is an excellent movie, one part of it is very hard to endure. If you can get over that hurdle, the movie’s totally absorbing.

A dedicated family man, a major in the Danish military, heads off to Afghanistan where his helicopter comes under fire and crashes into the sea. He’s presumed dead but after a while it turns out he has been taken prisoner. (Sorry to reveal this much of the plot but it occurs very early and it’s impossible to discuss the movie without revealing this much.) Meanwhile his family is mourning his loss back home. His wild and crazy brother seems to be taking over the "dead" man’s place in the family.

Sound a bit contrived? Ok, but what about Othello? Lear? Then there’s good old Hamlet – a plot propelled by a ghost for godsake! I guess my point is that corny plot contrivances don’t matter that much as long as long as the piece turns up some genuine insight into being human. And this one does. The actors are all superb. Every moment feels perfectly real. Characters’ reactions are always complex and multi-faceted. The major’s two young daughters have eyes and teeth too big for their skinny faces, just like actual kids, not Hollywood brats. My favourite moment involving them: at the last minute, they balk and refuse to wear their good dresses to their dad’s memorial service.

On the intimate level, Ms. Bier really knows people and how they behave. (Is this a special trait of Scandinavian filmmakers? I’m thinking of the classic My Life as a Dog. What made that movie for me was the loving detail to things like the way the old lady prepared for bed.) On the more philosophical level, the film made me confront some of the deepest and darkest questions a guy can handle: What is worth dying for? Are there some situations where you would be better off dead? Could you be forced to do something that could destroy the person you are?

Rating: B+

Trying (Play) by Joanna McClelland Glass, directed by Marti Maraden (Canstage, Toronto)

Paul Soles and Caroline Cave do beautiful work in this two-hander by Joanna McClelland Glass. It tells about Ms. Glass' experience as a 25-year-old Saskatoon girl working for retired Judge Francis Biddle in Washington, DC in 1967. From the outset, it's obvious what the arc of the play is going to be: how long will this polite girl put up with this curmudgeon? Amid topical references to things like the Martin Luther King assassination, there are lots of amusing comments on the young woman's Canadianness. Expectedly, the relationship between the judge and the secretary changes considerably by the time we've reached the touching ending.

So why did the show send me home feeling rather depressed? Dare I mention the possibility of boredom? After half an hour, the old man's fulminating about split infinitives wears a bit thin. There are references to his involvement in the Nuremberg Trials and his opposition, as Attorney General, to the internment of the Japanese, but these topics pass without much effect.

Maybe I'm a total boor, but I crave a bit of excitement in a play. Near the end of the first act, some firecrackers go off when the woman responds to the geezer’s insults. We think: aha, they're really going to get into now. We’re gonna have a tooth-and-nail fight to the finish -- feminism against paternalism. They’re finally gonna resolve something. But no, that moment passes too.

Could the actors have done anything to inject a little more drama into the proceedings? The judge is supposed to be 82 years old and dying, but Mr. Soles' performance was so quiet and realistic that, attimes, it was like watching a movie rather than a stage play.

I began to wonder, particularly in the first part of the play, why Ms. Cave was signaling her emotions to the audience in a facial way. In retrospect, it occurs to me that the script gives the secretary only a couple of opportunities to show anything other than perfect Canadian decency. So, for lack of supporting text, Ms. Cave does her best to make her character interesting. You begin to become too aware that it’s all about an attempt to convince us devoted Canstage followers out there that we're having some kind of an experience of theatre.

So much niceness on display, so many middle-class Torontonians thronging the theatre for an afternoon of agreeable, mildly-entertaining Canadian fare, so much money spent on the production of this civilized, inoffensive fluff, so much talent poured into the making of this pretty bauble. There’s my recipe for depression.

You may say this sounds like the reaction of a jealous playwright. You may have something there.